


on tiny cat's feet

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cats in Thedas are rarely as they seem, and becoming friends with one is rarely as simple as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on tiny cat's feet

**Author's Note:**

> I try to refrain from writing Anders, as I am not as close to him as many others are.  
> But it never seems to work out for long. Apologies in advance for any detail wonkiness that being too lazy to double-check the wiki may have caused.

Shane Cousland didn't like him.

He didn't need Oghren to tell him. He'd always been praised on his keen eyesight, his astute perception.  
'The Anders Glare', the first enchanter's amused and challenging smile curving around the phrase. 'It's said you can see a man's soul clean through his templar armour. Is that true?'

The Warden-Commander's armour was plenty thick, royal plate and dragonscale, but nothing obscured the nakedness of her expressive features. She might have found him entertaining in the beginning, when he hadn't yet exhausted his play-boy routine, but now he was just in the way.

"I'm beginning to think Alistair's the queen," he comments dryly one day, and is still rubbing the sore spot on his stubbled cheek hours later.

"What is it you _want?"_ she asks him another day. "You're safe from the templars for now -- you're welcome. What will you do once my business here is done?"  
"I'll follow you to the ends of the earth, my lady," but she doesn't even see the sloppy, foolish bow he makes to mask the desperation in his voice.

 _What will you do once you are left alone?_ his dreams murmur familiarly. _Give yourself back, just to feel it again?_

All that aside, the simple fact was that Her Highness did not care for him in the slightest. Which is why Oghren chokes on his sucker -- cherry, the only flavour he'd entertain -- when Shane sweeps the fat orange kitten up and remarks, "You remind me of an annoying apostate I know."

"The last thing Anders needs is something to take care of," Velanna sniffs. Sigrun is too busy ripping a loose piece of string off her head-scarf so she can dangle it for the kitten's amusement, and doesn't comment.  
Shane gives Anders the kitten, wordlessly, a handing-off and departing without fanfare or preamble.

"Wait--!" But Shane has already swept out of the room, and the fat orange kitten is blinking up at Anders, and he blinks back.

After a few minutes, he licks his cracked lips. "It's said you can see a man's soul clean through his armour. Is that true?"

The cat and Anders are inseparable. Its small, expressionless face always peeks out from the opening in his satchel, no matter where they are. Sigrun finds fewer wounds on her person after battles, though she fights with more fury and enthusiasm than ever. Nathaniel's grievous leg wound heals faster than anyone had expected. The cautious Velanna's store of elfroot and pre-mixed health poultices goes untouched.  
Anders sleeps with Ser Pounce-A-Lot curled on his barely-rising chest, and sweats through his dreams, and his companions drink deeply of the draught of forgetfulness and dream delightful dreams.

On the night of the Keep's reckoning, Anders collapses amongst heaps of already-mouldering darkspawn corpses, a frothy pink rivulet of blood trickling from his parched mouth.  
The Warden-Commander returns to being Queen, and no one asks after the mage that secured the keep. No one except the commander of the next wave of Wardens, who finds Anders skulking through passages that should have been sealed, and who likes him even less than Shane did.

 _"I will not be with you much longer, sweetling,"_ she tells him, and she doesn't use the honeyed voice she'd employed when they first met, but the jagged one he preferred, the one that made his balls shrivel and his pulse flutter like wings behind bars.  
 _"They come for me. They know. Like templars, they have enough old magic inside them to know."_

"Who will sustain me?" the wretch pleads, disused voice grating against abused vocal cords, "Who? You cannot leave me! I have given! _I have given!"_

The mask of death that floats above the wretch in later hours is not the one he'd so eagerly sought so many times before.

 _Your lips to mine,_ Justice whispers, _and it is done._


End file.
